Dyer Brown grows in Southeast, expands into behavioral health design

Katie Moulder, NCIDQ

Since opening a satellite headquarters in Atlanta nearly five years ago, Boston-based national architecture and interiors firm Dyer Brown has rapidly expanded its activity in the surrounding metro region and beyond.

To support sustainable growth in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast region, the firm has just announced a major new hire: Katie Moulder, NCIDQ, has joined the firm as an interior designer and project manager. In addition to significant experience in workplace and hospitality — two sectors in which Dyer Brown has emerged as a powerhouse in its 50-plus years — Moulder brings familiarity with industrial projects, contributing a unique complement to the firm’s combined acumen.

According to Maggie Mitchell, IIDA, a Dyer Brown associate and senior interior designer who leads the Atlanta office on a day-to-day basis, Moulder has joined the team at a critical time, as the firm has begun expanding its portfolio into an exciting new sector seeing huge growth in the Southeast: behavioral health care facility design.

“We were very fortunate to form a relationship with Skyland Trail,” says Mitchell, referring to the nonprofit mental health treatment organization serving adults and adolescents in the Atlanta area with both residential and outpatient programs. “Our first project for them was just helping develop a furniture and accessories program, no architectural services at all. But the collaboration has blossomed, and now we provide on-call services for updates and improvements to Skyland Trail’s five campuses as well as its standalone administrative and clinic locations.”

Dyer Brown has already designed and programmed upgrades to the organization’s dining facilities, a gymnasium and fitness center, group therapy meeting rooms, a greenhouse, several workspaces, and gathering areas.

“Skyland Trail is a special place with an important mission. It has been a unique challenge to support the work of an award-winning treatment center,” adds Mitchell. “The level of care that we have to bring to every aspect of the design is intense, and so is our collaboration with the leaders and providers: intimately close, listening carefully and understanding, and following up with significant time and research.”

Mitchell adds, “The Skyland Trail team understands that design is critical, and that a single detail could make a huge difference in a client’s healing process.”

She notes that Moulder and the rest of the team have their work cut out for them: the leadership of Skyland Trail recently referred Dyer Brown to Hillside, another nonprofit mental health provider in the area operating on a 13-acre campus. According to Dyer Brown, Hillside are regarded as innovators in behavioral health, who have even trademarked their own clinical treatment method, the relationship-focused Theraplay™.

So far Dyer Brown has provided a range of services for Hillside, including campus-wide furniture replacement, flexible furniture replacement and finish upgrades in staff areas, acoustical panel designs for residential cottages, and the development of a finish palette intended to support wellbeing and positive treatment outcomes.

“We’ve been doing a ton of research into design for behavioral health, and we’ve learned that there’s a significant amount of overlap with our other areas of expertise,” notes Mitchell. “For example, our workplace designs tend to focus on comfort, health and wellbeing, in addition to productivity, and borrow from the best of our hospitality work to achieve those ends. This approach to designing offices prepared us better than we might have anticipated for the world of behavioral health.”

On that topic, the firm’s most recent Atlanta region workplace project for financial services company Berman Capital was designed with the post-pandemic era in mind, and the work is not yet done: the company has added another 3,600 square feet to its original 8,000-square-foot lease, and Dyer Brown is already working on design specs for the expansion.

The firm also recently completely redesigned the interior of the Humanities Hall at Emory University, transforming the 8,000-plus-square-foot interior of the two-story building to make it brighter and sunnier – a healthier, more productive, and more comfortable environment for students and faculty alike.

Maggie Mitchell, IIDA

About Dyer Brown

Recognized nationally for its award-winning portfolio of architecture and interior design projects, Dyer Brown Architects offers a fully integrated suite of professional services including high-level building owner and corporate advisory as well as 3D concept visualization. The firm’s clients range from property owner/developers and end-users to global corporations and leading regional brands in such market sectors as workplace, retail, hospitality and higher education. Known for its unwavering commitment to both design excellence and client service, Dyer Brown’s 50 professionals forge long-lasting relationships with business leaders, building owners and brokers, and institutional leaders. Dyer Brown believes that buildings and spaces — the backdrop to our daily, shared experience — should always be inspiring, useful and enjoyable. See the firm’s award-winning work and a detailed overview at dyerbrown.com.